Heart of Deception by M.L. Malcolm

Author:M.L. Malcolm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

BOSTON, 1950

“Oh, c’mon, Maddy. It’s New Year’s Eve, for cryin’ out loud. The beginning of a new decade! You can’t just sit in the dorm and listen to the radio. What’s the matter with a blind date?”

Maddy shook her head. “No, thanks, Vick.”

“You’d really be helping us out. We need three girls, on account of a friend of theirs just got stood up, and Allen and Theo don’t want to leave him alone crying into his petri dish on New Year’s. The med school guys don’t have a lot of time to socialize, you know. It’s not like dating some jock from BU.”

“You should know,” Maddy commented, with a smile that took the sting out of her words.

“Geez, Maddy. This from Little Miss Stuck-in-the-Dorm. The only guy you ever went out with was that guy from MIT, and he didn’t last long.”

“I didn’t know you kept such close tabs on my social life.”

“It’s not difficult. Please, for me, one night out. Otherwise, the next time you need help in Composition 110, I’ll tell you to blow it out your tuba.”

Maddy could not help but laugh. “Okay, Miss Vicki Violin. What’s the dress code?”

“That’s swell, Maddy! And we’ll be going to a private club for sure. These guys are loaded. You want to borrow something? Something a little more festive? Who am I kidding, anything I own would fall right off you. But thanks. You really saved us.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Maddy started to regret her decision less than an hour later, after she’d strewn every outfit she owned across the length and width of her small dorm room. Vicki was right. She dressed like an old woman. She bought her clothes on shopping junkets when she went home on vacation or when Bernice came to visit, and her choices were heavily influenced by her aunt’s conservative taste. Going one more time to her closet, she spotted her recital dress from the previous year. It was an understated black silk, but fashionably cut, with a pinched-in waist and a full skirt that fell in supple pleats to midcalf. Three little pearl buttons on the bodice led the way to a demure, narrow collar of white satin.

Maddy tried on the dress. She unbuttoned the collar, exposing a small V of flesh, and put on the triple-strand pearl choker Bernice and Archie had given her for her eighteenth birthday. The result was not really festive, but it was sophisticated. Confident. Everything she felt sitting at a piano, and nowhere else.

As she consulted the mirror for a final inspection she noticed, not for the first time, how much she resembled her mother. But no amount of affirmation from the mirror could make her feel beautiful. The beauty belonged to her mother. Maddy could not claim it.

The young men picked up their dates at seven o’clock. The six of them piled into Theo’s enormous gold Cadillac, made introductions all around, and then the boys began to debate the best way to make it to the restaurant, given the traffic and the icy weather.

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